Management
Matt Blumberg
Founder, CEO & Chairman
Matt Blumberg founded Return Path in 1999 back when he had more hair on his head, less hair on his face, and all of it was brown. He started the company because he knew that the world needed a better way of handling email change of address (the company's first product). Matt is passionate about making the online relationship between end users and marketers/market researchers better for both sides of the equation. It is with great pride that he has watched this initial creation grow into a 100-plus person company with market leading brands, innovative products, multiple patents, and renowned industry experts on staff in three different areas of the commercial email industry.
In his prior lives, Matt ran marketing, product management, and the Internet group for MovieFone, Inc. (acquired by AOL, and yes, he does know the guy with the voice); he served as an associate with private equity firm General Atlantic Partners, and he was a consultant with Mercer Management Consulting. While all great jobs, none was nearly as fun as his current gig.
You can learn much more about Matt, possibly more than you ever wanted to, by reading his email marketing and entrepreneurship blog Only Once -- one of the first CEO blogs on the Internet.
Anita Absey
SVP, Sales and Marketing
Anita is a 20-year-veteran of the direct marketing industry, having spent that time leading teams of people to help clients create revenue-generating target marketing programs. A self-proclaimed "data junkie," she has helped literally hundreds of the world's smartest marketers successfully integrate data and technology for their customer acquisition and customer relationship management programs.
Before Return Path Anita spent much of her career at Acxiom and Abacus Direct (later DoubleClick). She holds a BA in Economics from Fordham University.
Tom Bartel
CIPP, Chief Privacy Officer
While his family and friends simply don't understand what "working in email" actually means, those in the industry will recognize this as fundamentally insane. Tom joined Return Path from Assurance Systems, where he collaborated with George Bilbrey on the industry's first Deliverability service. As head of operations he made sure these wild and never before seen tools ran as expected. In his prior experience, Tom slaved away with Email Publishing Inc., MessageMedia Inc., and DoubleClick Inc. Through it all he remains an avid email technology and privacy enthusiast. The IAPP will back him up on this as they have certified him as a Certified Information Privacy Professional. Tom bleeds green and gold as a Colorado State University alum, proudly holding a B.A. in Speech Communications.
Angela Baldonero
Vice President of People
Angela Baldonero is the Vice President of People which simply means that she is responsible for making Return Path the best place to work in the industry. How does she do this? By nurturing Return Path's most important assets - its employees. By driving company-wide initiatives that support the company's culture and team environment, Angela is directly responsible for the creation of a high performance organization that is committed to Return Path's mission and to building its legacy.
Angela relocated to New York from Washington, DC where she spent the past seven years as Regional Director of People Innovation - East Coast for Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants. She has performed pro-bono consulting work with The World Bank and Booz Allen Hamilton as well as volunteered with Dress for Success. Angela recently completed her Masters of Science in Organization Development at American University in Washington, DC. She began her career in her hometown of Vancouver, Canada after graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of British Columbia.
George Bilbrey
GM of Delivery Assurance
George joined RP through its merger with Veripost in 2001, a competitive ECOA service. George was the founder and CEO of Assurance Systems, which merged with Return Path in June 2003. He is also a co-founder of Return Path, the industry standard for Email Change of Address (ECOA).
Prior to Return Path he was Director of Product Management at Worldprints.com where he managed the development of the Image Catcher screensaver application and supporting web site, which acquired more than two million users in six months. He was formerly a Partner at Mercer Management Consulting in the high tech and telecommunications group, where he developed operational experience in computer manufacturing and telecommunications. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Duke University, and an MBA from the Kenan-Flagler School of Business, University of North Carolina.
Rob Mattes
CFO
Rob joined Return Path in 2004 through its acquisition of NetCreations, Inc. In addition to his financial duties, Rob heads up the legal and business/sales operations group of the company, and strives to provide the organization with as much information as possible - which is no small task. At the time of the NetCreations acquisition, Rob had been CFO for 4 years and was involved in the finance, operations and IT worlds and unlike Jack, felt the financial side of the world to be much more interesting. Prior to making the leap to the online world, Rob spent 10 years in the finance world, most recently as the Assistant Corporate Controller at W.R. Berkley Corp., a leading property casualty insurance holding company, where his four years of experience as a financial officer included both domestic and international reporting responsibilities, acquisition and due diligence, and special project management. Prior to that, he spent six years in KPMG LLP's New York City office, where he rose to the level of Audit Manager in the Financial Services practice of the firm.
Rob met his wife Laura at NetCreations, and they welcomed their first child (another Rob) last year. He is a Certified Public Accountant in the State of New York, a member of the IAB's CFO Committee, has a B.S. from Villanova University....and yes, Jeff is his brother!
Jeff Mattes
Vice President and GM of Authentic Response
Working with the worlds leading market research companies to decode the consumers mind, Jeff enjoys discovering how Authentic Response can best serve his clients.
Prior to his days at Return Path, Jeff was Vice President of Global Sales at CrossBorder Solutions, a leading developer of B2B financial software for multinational companies as well as at Transcentive, Inc., the leading provider of employee compensation management solutions. Jeff holds a BS from Kings College, where he remains on their Business Advisory Board. Jeff and his wife enjoy spending time outdoors with their children, a son and daughter.
Check out the Authentic Response website at: http://www.authenticresponse.net
Stephanie Miller
Vice President of Strategic Services
Give her any call to action, and Stephanie will develop an email marketing campaign strategy to get it to the right audience at the right time for the right result. Combining this zealotry with her tireless advocacy to elevate email to it's rightful home at the center of all direct marketing, might, in any other place, be called insanity. At Return Path, it's called Strategic Services.
She fell in love with helping clients succeed as a co-founder of a marketing communications consultancy in Philadelphia in 1989 -- when no one told her that a 24-year old had no business advising CEOs and Fortune 100 companies on their strategy. Later, after selling the firm to True North Communications in 1995, she became the first publisher of The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, when she must have missed the memo about online advertising having no future. After dragging that 50-foot phone cord around the country for three years demonstrating how computers -- as well as marketers and their customers -- could connect through the Internet, she moved to San Francisco and helped create Hotmail's database marketing initiatives, founded Real Network's media publishing division and spent several years as a marketing strategy consultant for too many long forgotten high tech start-ups as well as several well regarded (and still in business) B2B and B2C companies.
Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
While short in stature, Craig Swerdloff is tall on experience. Craig joined Return Path from IAC's Advertising Solutions group where he was the Vice President of Direct Marketing Solutions. Over four years at IAC, through the acquisition of Ask Jeeves, Craig drove significant revenue growth in Lead Generation, Email List Rental, Promotions, Sweepstakes, and Stream of Commerce advertising for IAC properties including iWon, Excite, Match.com, Ticketmaster, and Lending Tree. Prior to IAC Craig founded eBrokers, an email list brokerage firm based in Boston and held several management posts at 24/7 Media.
Craig currently serves as Chairman of the IAB Email Committee, and has held posts with CIMA, AIMA, and the DMA. Craig holds a BS in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing from the University of Vermont.
Jack Sinclair
COO
Jack Sinclair was a co-founder of Return Path in 1999. He was the Vice President of Finance and Corporate Resources until he decided in 2004 that databases and PHP were much more interesting than financial statements and has been the Chief Operating Officer ever since.
Before moving on to Return Path (not that he can remember back that far) Jack worked at Stern Stewart & Co. and the Financial Resource Group providing corporate finance consulting (i.e. producing pounds of documents) and investment banking services to small and large corporations. He graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a concentration in Finance.
Andy Sautins
Chief Technology Officer
Ken Takahashi
Vice President, Global Channels
Ken oversees Return Path's international operations, direction and growth as well as advises each line of business on development opportunities. He joined Return Path from DoubleClick (email division succeeded by Epsilon) where he was Vice President of Strategic Partnerships. In that capacity, Ken was responsible for all aspects of global partner strategy, management and execution in addition to running the industry's first international email deliverability team located throughout North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region.
His tenure within the email marketing industry dates back to 1999 when he joined MessageMedia. He has spent the better part of the past eight years fighting spam and advocating on behalf of the online marketing community around the world. Along with being a frequent industry speaker and contributor to leading publications, Ken serves on the board of directors to the Authentication and Online Trust Alliance. He holds a Bachelors of Science degree from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University.
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